


Of Genes and Grand Gestures

by Writeonthrough (Schroederplayspiano)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Marrriage, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Perthshire Cottage, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 12:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7102393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schroederplayspiano/pseuds/Writeonthrough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Skye Fitz-Simmons almost injures herself and comes close to blowing up her parents’ Scottish Cottage trying to help her Mom with an experiment,  Fitz takes his daughter out for the day in hopes of warning her about their shared tendency to risk everything for the ones they love…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Genes and Grand Gestures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchadoaboutdoctorwho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchadoaboutdoctorwho/gifts).



“I thought I was grounded.”

Fitz noted the disapproval and attitude in his sixteen-year-old daughter’s voice as he led the way up the Scottish hillside. Although, he should be used to it by now—Skye’s tone hadn’t changed in two days—he’d hoped taking her outside would led her a change of perspective.

“Oh, honey,” Fitz turned back to his daughter and saw her lagging far behind. He stopped and waited for her to catch up. “You are. You are _so_ grounded.”

“Ok. Well. Traditionally teenagers who are grounded are not permitted to leave the house.”

“Hm. Well.” Fitz stood still as Skye passed him to keep trudging up the hillside. Several moments passed before she looked back at him, her posture unusually straight with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised. “Traditionally teenagers don’t sneak into their mothers’ lab, steal their plans for inventions and almost blow themselves—not to mention the house—up while trying to make a scientific proposal a reality.”

“Trying?” Skye didn’t hide her offense in her raised voice and bulging eyes, “I didn’t try. I bloody well succeeded. I created the anti-serum that Mum’s been antagonizing over for days—I honestly don’t understand why the two of you aren’t thanking me for saving her any more trouble.”

“Thanking you?” Fitz’s blood pulsated through his veins and he couldn’t help matching his daughter’s raised tone. “You were this close,” he brought his index finger and thumb to her eye line, “To destroying the house.”

Skye waved off her father’s display, turned her back to him, and resumed walking up the hill. “Of course you would care more about the bloody house than you would your own daughter!”

Once he swallowed her words, Fitz followed after her. “Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think.” Skye shook her head. “I know. That stupid house has some kind of power over you and Mum—a power I don’t begin to understand because it’s an old cottage in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t go with either of your personalities at all! We belong in London—in America—somewhere, anywhere that’s bustling with excitement and innovations, not here where life goes slower than one kilometer an hour!”

“Skye. Don’t talk to me like that. You-you have no right—no idea—what you’re saying.”

She heard something different in her father’s voice. Different enough for her to take a moment’s pause from her rant to really look at him. His cheeks were flushed. A strain in his eyes seemed to hold back water from running out of them.

Apart from lowering her voice a little, her observations didn’t prevent her from continuing. “I honestly don’t understand. I helped Mum. I figured how her anti-serum could help loads of people. More than that I saved her from growing even more frustrated with her work—her passion.” She then leaned closer and whispered to Fitz as if she was sharing a deep secret with him. “I mean, do you know how frustrated and stuck she was getting? Each day I saw her resenting the project more and more. You and I both know what a shame it would be for Mum to lose her passion.”

“You’re her passion, Skye.” Fitz shook his head to the point where a small part of Skye begun to doubt her own words. “You and I are so alike, its scary.”

Whatever Skye expected to hear from her father’s mouth, it wasn’t that. Her eyelids narrowed to slits. “What are you talking about? Apart from our smarts, we’re nothing alike.”

He tilted her head, offered her a sad smile, and resisted the urge to reach out and stroke her cheek. “We both will risk everything to save the people we love.”

A single tear fell from his eye then. He wiped it away quickly, but not before Skye caught a glimpse of it.

“Dad…” 

Skye watched him find a place to sit on the ground. The long grass now stood to his shoulders. She searched for a place next to him, pushing the brown blades aside before finding the perfect spot.

“Did you ever hear the story of how I first told your Mum I loved her?”

“No…” Skye’s forehead creased. She plucked a piece a brown blade of grass and twiddled it between her fingers.

Fitz took a deep breath. “We were in S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time, out on a mission, and we-it-something-got complicated and we ended up in a storage pod, stuck at the bottom of the ocean, just the two of us with no way out…we were both going to die down there unless we figured out how to blow open the door and somehow find enough oxygen for both of us to swim up the ninety feet to the surface.”

The grass blade in Skye’s fingers stilled. “You found a way, though. You found enough oxygen and swam up together. You found a solution, just like you guys always do.”

“No, Skye.” Fitz finally reached out to his daughter and guided her down to lay with him in the grass. She rested her head on his chest. “There wasn’t enough oxygen for the two of us. I gave all the oxygen to your Mum so she would have a better chance to swim up to the surface and survive. I gave her the oxygen to show her how much I loved her.”

Skye turned and rested her chin on her father’s chest to look at him. “But, obviously, she saved you too. You wouldn’t be here, totally fine, if she didn’t.”

“I wasn’t fine, Skye.” Fitz tilted his head at her. His penetrating gaze challenged Skye’s prospective. “Come on. You’re a scientist. You know what happens to the brain if its deprived of oxygen.”

She blinked rapidly. Her forehead creased. Her voice broke with emotion. “But—” She sat up. “What?” Her voice barely carried over the wind in the grass. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not trying to upset you, honey.” Fitz propped himself up on one elbow. “You’re right. I’m here, with you, and everything’s fine. But I want you to know what your Mum and I went through to get here. It took half a dozen more touches with death before she even told me she wanted a life with me. That she dreamed of it in Perthshire. That the thought of living in a home together, away from all the dangers we faced daily, is how both of us made it through our hardest days without each other. How, now that we’re here—living in a cottage in Perthshire—you are what makes the hard times worth it for us.”

“Daddy…”

“And I don’t think you understand that—even now. Not really. I think you hear all these stories about your parents and write us off as indestructible…Like we’re some special couple—psychically linked through magic—”

“Not magic. `But you are a psychically linked couple, somehow. It’s weird—and annoying.”

Fitz broke into a smile. He ran his fingers through Skye’s brown curly hair. “You’re our favorite, Skye. Our favorite thing in the entire world. We love you more than science, more than ourselves, more than the bloody house—”

“Dad.”

“No. We do. And you need to understand that, and accept that, and start taking responsibility for that—because you have no idea how close you were to losing all of it—how close we were to losing you.”

Skye swallowed a sniffle. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he kissed her hair, "I know you are." Fitz held her gaze, serious for a moment, before falling back to the ground again. “Thank you.” He closed his eyes, letting the sun beam down on his face. He felt Skye lie beside and thought she smiled before returning to his chest. “You’re still grounded.”

“Yeah.” She nodded against his chest, feeling his heartbeat count the passing seconds. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Loved to hear from you in the comments! ♥︎


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